Johnny Bom de Transa

Just three years after "The Breakfast Club", this film reunites Michael Anthony Hall and Paul Gleason. It aims to achieve the irreverent humor of a film like "Stripes" combined with the titillation of "Porky's". Almost every character in this film is a caricature. You can tell a lot of people put a lot of work into this film, so where does it go wrong?

First, the film's primary story--about a football phenom who is unscrupulously recruited by every powerhouse program in the country--is a serious drag on the humor. There is nothing funny about the sacrifice of educational values to the football money machine.

Secondly, the film tries to include every standard feature of every youth comedy film--the clueless adults, the topless scenes, the humor centering on sex and alcohol--and in so doing, becomes a parody of itself.

I am deducting one point just for the colossal waste of talent.

Robert Downey Jr. is wasted here, playing the wacky sidekick. Uma Thurman's performance as the hometown girlfriend is lost in the silliness.

The entire film is predictable, sometimes cringe-worthy, and boring.

In a scene near the end of the film Hall, Downey and Thurman drive off in a convertible to begin their post-high school lives and there is a sense of what this film could have been: an interesting exploration of the lives of three kids who have issues to face and things to learn. It might even have been funny, too.

Lame sports comedy with a miscast Anthony Michael Hall as the hottest high school football prospect who ever lived. It's really a vanity project for Hall, who had been playing nerd characters his whole career. Here he's trying to buff up and be taken seriously as something more than a geek. He fails. Robert Downey, Jr. plays the wacky best friend, as he often did back then. Downey's the most entertaining part of this, which isn't saying much. Decent support from Paul Gleason and Jennifer Tilly. Early role by Uma Thurman. She's beautiful and does fine in a worthless part in a worthless movie. I pretty much hated every minute of this. Almost every character is unlikable, especially the lead. The satire about college sports and other things is heavy-handed and never funny. Oh, and the music is dreadful. Avoid this unless you are a massive fan of Hall, Downey, or Thurman.

Honestly, this is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's certainly one of the least-competently made studio releases ever. There are entire scenes in this movie in which the sound is so poorly handled that you can barely hear what characters are saying. This isn't helped by Anthony Michael Hall's decision to mumble all of his lines. He seemed very unenthusiastic about this role--like he could barely work up the energy even to say the words.

There is a scene in the film in which Hall's character and some friends have an impromptu football game on his girlfriend's front lawn, against her father (who hates Hall for some reason that is never explained) and some other boobs, that is so badly edited that you simply cannot tell what is happening. Characters come in and out of that scene without rhyme or reason--continuity errors abound. There are also many scenes in which weird dialog was looped in during post-production to bridge awkward narrative gaps. This is a sure sign that the director didn't really know what he was doing, and just failed to capture footage that made sense on its own.

Also, Robert Downey, Jr. is unbelievably obnoxious in this movie. I mean really disgusting.

There is one good scene in this movie, and it's pretty good. Anthony Michael Hall has just been on a recruitment tour of private colleges who want to give him football scholarships and he has come back to his hometown to negotiate a deal with the athletic director of a public university. The interplay between the two, especially the unspoken lines, is done beautifully.

Other than that, this is a pretty standard (sub-standard) teen flick posing as a cautionary tale. I think this movie wanted to be a comedic version of "All the Right Moves", but didn't have the guts to tell a real story.

Life lessons are not always the most prevalent in coming of age genre films. Sometimes they're real obvious, while others are more obscure and look to have their viewers find the deeper meaning themselves. It's also hard to say how significant a coming of age film can be when it is a Rated R comedy. Some have worked brilliantly - The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) is one. This on the other hand is a strange mix of elements that plays its cards right in some respects, while at other moments it's questionable to what the crew was thinking here. This is the story of Johnny Walker (Anthony Michael Hall), a high school athlete who has quite a fan club. After winning the last football game of the season (by cheating no less), Walker is approached by recruiter upon recruiter to play for their college team.

There are also other people who want Johnny to go with their opinion. Wayne Hisler (Paul Gleason), the high school coach wants him to attend a college of his choice so he can acquire special benefits and he'll do anything to make sure it happens. Johnny's mom and grandpa want him to get an education more than a sports scholarship and his girlfriend Georgia (Uma Thurman) wants him to attend State with her. So many opinions, which one will he choose?! Well, Johnny ends up attending mostly all of their open houses. This ends up having him being bribed with things that seem almost unrealistic or things that have nothing to do with getting an education or playing football. Of course fame grants several of these things but at a high school level? The kid and his team didn't even play fairly winning the last game so how does that even qualify? Are the refs that blind?

Plus, what's even more shocking is to how this production was able to gather now famous actors when they were starting off and the chemistry feels almost nonexistent. And, the screenplay was completed by three writers, all of which worked on Revenge of the Nerds (1984). How is that barely any charm are given to these characters? There are only a couple of moments that Johnny goes through that actually develop him as a character. Other than that he's placed in silly events that should trigger his conscience saying he shouldn't be there. The best parts of the film are when Johnny's family is on screen. Somehow they seem to have the best lines and character arcs. My favorite family member was the grandfather (George Hall). Such a nice old man.

Uma Thurman's character has a very typical character arc, loves her boyfriend - finds him as a jerk briefly - then resorts back to him. Possibly the strangest of all is Robert Downey Jr.'s character. Either he tries too hard to be funny or his jokes don't make any sense. It's baffling, I guess Downey Jr. didn't realize how much funnier he is when he says his lines deadpan than actually trying to be comical. Fans might also get a kick out of actor Marshal Bell's performance as Uma Thurman's dad, also the chief of police. He has some funny one liners at times too. All right enough of the characters. Jay Ferguson's music to the film is appropriately set but doesn't have anything to remember about it. Was it a comedy that had laughs galore? Not so much. Does it feel like a coming of age movie? Not really.

The cast contains famous actors of today in their youth and has a moral somewhere in its story but its delivery is overshadowed by hit and miss comedy. Much of the events that take place feel impossible too, decreasing its believability.